In mid-February 2014 my dear husband was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. His A1c level was 12.4. The doctor put him on an oral medication but told him that it was highly likely he would have to go on insulin very soon unless he could get that number way down. Well, DH is seriously afraid of needles and even the idea of having to inject himself with insulin every day was a serious wake up call.

To try and get his blood glucose under control, he ignored the doctor's advice that he follow a 50/30/20 carb/protein/fats diet plan. Instead, for the first week, he ate only one or two foods at a meal and, if his post-meal glucose level jumped up significantly, we marked that food off the list of things he could eat. If it only jumped up a little bit, we labeled the food a "limited amounts" item. Fruit juices, pasta, rice, potatoes, and breads were the first things to go; then cereals, high carb fruits like bananas and grapes, high glycemic vegetables like peas and corn, etc. Instead of a bowl of cereal in the mornings for breakfast, I started fixing him an omelet with bacon or sausage, cheese, onion, avacado... pretty much anything that did not seem to cause high post-meal blood sugar levels. And dinners became lots of salad greens, low GI veggies, with meats and cheeses.

To be supportive of him...and because I'm too lazy to fix two separate meals for us... I ate the same foods he was eating. Wonder of wonders, without even trying to cut calories, I suddenly found myself losing weight! Something I have not been able to do successfully for years! And, the pounds keep coming off despite the fact that I now indulge guilt-free on my favorite snack (cheese) WHENEVER I want to. This is so amazing! I can't believe I struggled to stay on the low-fat diets prescribed by my doctor for years while the pounds kept right on piling on!

BTW - When DH went in to have his A1c level tested in June, it had dropped from 12.4 (seriously diabetic) to 5.4 (within the normal range). His doctor could not believe it and actually made him come back for a repeat test.

We're both quite happy with the low carb diet we've "fallen" into and plan to stick with it for life!

That is awesome for you both !! Keep up the good work !!

Welcome Bev!
What a wonderful story. Most of us here are not accidental LCers and have to work at it, so we have great information about various LC diets and recipes. Look around all the forums, check out the diabetes one here http://forum.lowcarber.org/forumdisplay.php?f=45
Your husband had some serious improvement..what an inspiration.
Wishing you both continued success,

That's incredible! Good for you both!

I have to ask, though... at the time, had you heard of Atkins or low carb? It's just interesting that you sort of did it backwards from most of us.

I'm tempted to copy/paste this for my DBF. His BG is way too high.

Great story and intro. You have no idea how fortunate you are for what you have stumbled onto.

Well done to you for getting the blood sugars sorted, your story is so rare, but great when it happens :-)

Good for you and your DH. My father was a type 2. He still made insulin but was resistant, so the doc put on a drug that increased is insulin secretion to compensate for the resistance.

Unfortunately, insulin is as harmful as the sugar and it burned out the blood vessels in his heard and kidneys.

Your DH is doing the right thing - good for you both.

Bob

WONDERFUL! I started LC because I my glucose was high and the doc was beginning to threaten me as well. It is nothing short of incredible what this way of eating does for us.

Congratulations to both of you and I am glad you found this forum!

I love this story! Thank you for sharing!!!!

It was meant to be for both of you!!!

Congrats on your current success and Welcome to one of the best LC Forums!

Hello and welcome. It does not matter how you got here -- you are here and that is what is important. I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes about the same time as your husband. I did not want to use drugs to control it either, so I've been sticking to my LC program like glue. Today I got my A1C results back at my 90 day check-up. I wish I had your husband's results -- but I am still happy with what I got. I went from a score of 7.1 to 6.0 (mid pre-diabetes range) and the doctor expects that I will make it to the normal range by my next check-up. My cholesterol numbers were great, too. This LC way of eating really is the best way to control your blood sugar and curb your appetite. The ability to lose weight while not starving all the time is the best "side effect" you could imagine.

Hey all, thanks for the nice comments. DH and I are still sticking with low carb and both of us are feeling so much better that we've added a daily (well, nearly daily) walk to our regimen. His daily BG measure are staying very nicely in the 85 to 90 range which is great. Unfortunately, my weight loss seems to have pretty much leveled off. I'm telling myself that it is because the walking I'm doing is turning fat into muscle (which, I've heard, weighs more) and that the numbers on the scale will eventually start going back down again. All my clothes do seem to be getting baggier but it is harder to feel confident that one is going in the right direction without those hard numbers from the bathroom scale. LOL!

I lost my first 65 pounds without any exercise. At the first of June, I started a walking routine - 4 or 5 days a week for 30 to 60 minutes each day. Coincidence or not, I don't know - but the scale stopped moving for 3 weeks. It was my first major plateau since I started. I was beginning to think that I was not going to lose any weight in the month of June -- but the last week I had what some call a "Whoosh" and I ended up with a 12 pound loss for the month. I know that I gained some muscle over that time, but it was clear to me that I also retained extra water. I'd read that this can happen when you start an exercise regiment.

What Ken wrote is possible, but also, depending on age and hormonal status, women sometimes have to work harder to lose weight than men. It is unfair, tell me about it , but you may need to be a bit more structured with your diet, watching carb counts more than your husband. There are many reasons for stalls, or none at all, just your body taking a pause in your weight loss journey. Keep eating the way you have, and if you ever want to tighten up the diet, and follow a formal program, there is much information on this forum to learn about them and tips to consider when weight loss stops for a while.

Muscle does weigh more than fat, so if the clothes are getting baggier, I wouldn't be concerned about it.

Thank you all for the supportive and helpful comments. Wanted to let you know that I'm still sticking with low carb and, after a nearly month-long "stall" back in July, the pounds started dropping off again. I'm now down by 50 POUNDS since first falling into low carb...including dropping 5 pounds over the past two weeks. And, I am never hungry! I seriously LOVE this way of eating!

To answer a question someone above posed... yes, I had heard of Adkins before accidentally falling into this way of eating. But, I had always dismissed it as just another fad diet. I still have not read his book (or any other diet book for that matter) because I fully believed that following the AMA's "food pyramid" that I learned about in grade school was THE ONLY HEALTHY DIET in the world, that the food pyramid was supported by tons of medical research, etc. and that any other way of eating would ultimately result in ruining one's health and/or rebounding to an even greater weight.

So whenever I heard someone talking about ANY other diet, I would roll my eyes and dismiss it without even looking into the diet in any depth. I lumped Adkins in with "cottage cheese and grapefruit only" or "cabbage soup only" or the "apple cider vinegar" diets.

I always figured that the reason I kept gaining weight over the years, despite the fact that I followed the food pyramid about as closely as it is humanly possible to do, was because I simply ate too much in general, didn't exercise enough, and let too much fat slip into my diet unnoticed.

My doctor was always telling me that I needed to cut more fats out of my diet. (He recommended no more than 10% of calories come from fats...and that those be ONLY the good fats.) And, for years and years, I kept trying.

It used to be that brown rice was a staple in our diet... as in I cooked rice for dinner practically every night and we ate it without any butter or oils of any kind added. When we didn't have rice, we had whole grain pastas with tomato based, again without any added fats. Breakfast was always either oatmeal or Kashi granola cereal plus fruit and skim milk. We also ate lots of whole grain breads. (I don't even particularly LIKE rice, pasta, bread or cereal but, the food pyramid said one had to have 6 to 11 servings per day so....) Sandwiches were made with only the leanest deli meats and the skinniest possible slices of cheese. I banished mayonnaise despite the fact that I've never much cared for mustard. For dinner we stuck with grilled fish or grilled chicken breast 90% of the time... and I carefully stripped off the skin and all surface fat from the chicken before cooking it. I never fried anything. Except for hamburger, beef and pork were 2 to 3 times a month treats. And before falling in this "low carb" way of eating, I hadn't tasted real butter or full fat cream in years. I bought only skim milk and "low fat" and "heart healthy" everything. I never brought any cookies, candies, cakes, pies, crackers or other "junk food" into the house unless we were having company. We gave up ice cream years ago in favor of non-fat frozen fruit bars. Well, you get the idea.

But despite all that, the weight kept piling on. Four or five pounds every year! Plus, I was constantly HUNGRY. I mean HUNGRY as in, I could eat dinner and then two hours later it would feel like there was a roaring lion in my belly that was going to EAT ME from the inside out if I didn't feed it.

After cutting out the carbs (I'm now down to about 30 g net carbs per day) the roaring lion in my belly has gone away. I can eat dinner at 6 or 7 PM and not want another bite before going to bed. And I'm not even particularly hungry when I wake up in the mornings. I will often have just a cup of coffee with a tsp of coconut oil and a tsp of full fat cream in it for breakfast. (Learned about coconut oil on this forum.) By lunch time, I am usually hungry but even then, it is a manageable hunger. If I'm busy doing something else, I can easily snack on a few nuts and postpone lunch for a couple of hours without getting the hunger shakes.

I no longer feel that food controls me! I just cannot believe that I spent all those years trapped in a fat body by my own blind faith in the AMA's food pyramid. No more. This low carb WOE is my new food religion because THIS WORKS!